Texas Plane Crash Kills Three

Published 8:00 pm, Wednesday, January 16, 2002

A small plane crashed into a house Thursday, killing three people and setting the house on fire, police said. Two others aboard the plane were injured.

There was no one in the house when the twin-engine plane plunged into a residential area. The house fire was quickly brought under control and no one on the ground was injured, said police Lt. Edward Best.

He said two males and a female aboard the Cessna 340 died. The two injured passengers, both males, were hospitalized.

A woman at a nearby elementary school said she saw a small plane flying at tree level. Charlotte Carpenter told the Temple Daily Telegram that the plane made a hard turn just before the crash, then she saw a large plume of smoke.

The plane took off from Killeen, said Kathleen Bergen, Atlanta-based spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration. Killeen is 20 miles west of Temple, which is 60 miles north of Austin.